Jason Hartmoor is dying. But will his past kill him first?

After a lifetime of service in the Middle East, retired diplomat Jason Hartmoor is dying of cancer. He embarks on a last journey back to Lebanon where he studied Arabic as a young man at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, the infamous 'British spy school' in the village of Shemlan far up in the hills of the Chouf, above Beirut.

Jason wants to find the love he lost when the civil war forced him to flee Lebanon, but his past catches up with him with such rapidity and violence it threatens to kill him before the disease gets a chance. The only man who can keep him alive long enough to face history is maverick intelligence operative Gerald Lynch.